Apple Watch

Apple does a pretty good job with privacy and security as a company. They say they don't share your data for their own advertisement purposes and Apple takes special care to make sure your Siri requests aren't associated with you, which is great. Apple did face backlash in 2019 when it came to light their contractors were regularly listening in on confidential personal conversations when they were reviewing the voice assistant's recordings. Apple changed their policy so users weren't automatically opted-in to human voice review. Recently, Apple made another positive change for your Siri voice requests — many audio requests for things like setting timers or alarms or controlling music will no longer be sent over the internet to their servers, instead processing them directly on the device. This is better for your privacy.

This device does track a whole bunch of biometric data including your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, menstrual cycle, hearing, breathing, and your heart's electrical signals. That's a lot of personal information gathered in one place. A reminder, it’s always good to lock down the privacy on all this data as much as possible.

What is not good is what can happen with all this very personal health data if others aren't careful. A recent report showed that health data for over 61 million fitness tracker users, including both Fitbit and Apple, was exposed when a third party company that allowed users to sync their health data from their fitness trackers did not secure the data properly. Personal information such as names, birthdates, weight, height, gender, and geographical location for Apple and other fitness tracker users was left exposed because the company didn't password protect or encrypt their database. This is a great reminder that yes, while Apple might do a good job with their own security, anytime you sync or share that data with anyone else, it could be vulnerable. I don't know about you, but I don't need the world to know my weight and where I live. That’s really dang creepy.

Update, August 2022 following the overturn of Roe vs Wade protection reproductive health rights in the United States.
Apple does do a pretty good job with privacy, so that's good when it comes to using the Apple Health app for period and reproductive health tracking. And if users take the steps Apple recommends to protect this data, it should be fairly safe out there on the Cloud. Apple says, "
When your phone is locked with a passcode, Touch ID or Face ID, all of your health and fitness data in the Health app, other than your Medical ID, is encrypted. Any health data synced to iCloud is encrypted both in transit and on our servers. And if you have a recent version of watchOS and iOS with the default two-factor authentication and a passcode, your health and activity data will be stored in a way that’s unreadable to Apple." So lock those phones down, set up two-factor authentication, disable iCloud sharing of Apple Health data, and don't share any of those passcodes with anyone, ever.

And given Apple Health data can be synced with lots of third-party apps and companies, well, don't do that. The more you share this data, the more likely it can be that it will be vulnerable. Limit that sharing as much as you can!

Finally, Apple does have a pretty general statement about how they might share data with law enforcement in their privacy policy, which is kinda a bummer. They say, "We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate. We may also disclose information about you where there is a lawful basis for doing so, if we determine that disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce our terms and conditions or to protect our operations or users." Fortunately, Apple does have a pretty good track record at pushing back against law enforcement requests for data. However, they're still not perfect, as they recently gave up data to hackers who forged emergency data request legal documents.

So, while using an Apple Watch and Apple Health to track your period might be safer than other options, it's good to remember, it's still far from perfect and you should take all the precautions possible to protect your data and only share what you'd feel safe being on the internet.